Conventional equestrian protection clothing uses 15 to 20 mm thick foam plastics blocks arranged in a manner similar to a buoyancy aid. These blocks have the ability to absorb impact energy, but limited ability to spread it out over the body. However foam plastics is an insulating material and wearers of foam plastics equestrian protection consider that garments using the blocks are hot and uncomfortable as well as bulky and inflexible. Whilst foam plastics blocks absorb impact energy from a fall or other low grade impacts the foam plastics blocks are less effective in directed impacts such as a kick from a horse.
Currently available alternative systems also contain problems. For example U.S. Pat. No. 5,794,261 describes a joint protective guard for use in sports such as softball and baseball. The guard includes a number of curved pieces each having an upper surface level and a lower surface level. The lower level of each piece is attached to the upper level of the next piece at each end so that two pieces are pivotable relative to each other. This allows the guard to be flexed to fit around a wearer's shoulder, elbow or knee joint without leaving any of the joint exposed. However this system does not spread the energy of an impact and is limited in usefulness to moveable joints.
A second existing system is described by U.S. Pat. No. 4,241,457 and comprises a bullet proof vest. The vest of the invention includes two layers of segmented panels. Each layer of panels comprises a plurality of panels that are regularly shaped and in a compressed state sit flat, side by side. The lower layer of panels is offset from the upper layer with a major portion of corresponding segmented panels in each layer overlapping. Panels are adhered in the major portion of overlap. The lower layer of panels is also adhered to a backing material. In this way the layers of panels can be flexed in a convex direction from the backing material. When a bullet or other object impacts on a panel in the upper layer of panels the panel moves to its compressed state and spreads the impact energy into the adjacent panels in the lower layer. The panels in the lower layer also move to the compressed state and further spread the impact energy to any adjacent panels in the upper layer and so on. The disadvantage of this system is that the panels all move to the rigid compressed state when impacted which reduces the flexibility of the vest.
There is a need for a protection garment that overcomes the problems of inflexibility, heat and bulkiness in the current foam plastics protection garments and provide protection from a range of impacts.